Regulations said that the banknote you could exchange back for gold, cannot be anymore. Talk about not getting shafted, intrinsic value vs. depending on a system to tell value from useless paper is a terrible deal.

Intrinsic value is not what keeps a currency strong. Devising a way to prevent cheap unlimited production of new currency is what we need. In the old days money was tied to gold - you can't simply print up more gold. These days the powers that be can steal the value of dollars you hold just by printing a new piece of paper with a big number written on it. The strength of bitcoin is that it is limited by design.

The Bitcoin payment network has utility value, because it can perform a useful function (move value from place to place, fast, with low fees). The digital currency unit within the network has value derived from the usefulness of the network it is part of. By itself the currency unit is as useless as a UPS shipping label would be without the rest of UPS.

It should be evident that a network of relay and processing nodes, databases, user software, websites, and smartphone apps can have non-zero value. We could differ on exactly what the value is, but given how much people pay for similar items elsewhere, I don't think you can argue it is zero.

Your post is insightful and deserves modding up. However, I respectfully disagree with you and AC on whether Bitcoins have value. I claim they do.

IANAE, but it's my understanding that the intrinsic value of money is determined by what a buyer and a seller agree it's worth as payment for something, in a fluid economy with lots of buyers and sellers to encourage fairness. The Bitcoin network provides an infrastructure for transactions in such an economy. But without Bitcoins, you can't participate in it.

Note that I was referring to "a fluid economy with lots of buyers and sellers to encourage fairness." I didn't mean that liquidity leads to fairness, rather that fairness can flourish only in an environment of liquidity, i.e., one with numerous players who aspire to fairness, but who are motivated to pursue it by the presence of their fellow players.

To put it another way, even the noblest among us can be corrupted, but it's harder to succumb to such corruption when others are watc

intrinsic value vs. depending on a system to tell value from useless paper is a terrible deal.

There is no such thing as "intrinsic value". All value is relative to human needs and desires, which are not only different for each person, but varies for the same person at different times. You can measure "utility value" for an item, based on its usefulness to people, but that changes over time. For example, horses as transportation have near zero or even negative utility in the modern world, since they cost more to own and operate than even the worst motorized transport, and there are many places you

I guess you didn't read with enough attention. Gold has intrinsic value because it does not depend on a system who says "that piece of paper is worth X". It is not the magic material that solves all problems, of course, but losing the conversion to gold is still LOSING no matter how you put it.

Although USD lost it "gold standard", but replaced it with "lead standard". That is the real intrinsic value. The US government wants taxes to be payed un USD. If you dont pay your taxes, the have a lot of weapons that fires lead that forces you to pay your taxes in USD.Thas the real "intrinsic value" for USD, that Bitcoins lacks.

What reason would that be exactly ? As I see it, bitcoin has a number of unique properties, which can offer an advantage over other ways to transfer money. It also has some disadvantages, so it would not make a good candidate to replace current fiat money systems. However, bitcoin can happily coexist with fiat money, and people can chose whichever method they prefer for each transactions. They may still buy their groceries with fiat money, but maybe make an international payment for some software design wor

For instance: low cost, quick and easy way to transfer money to a person in another country. Alternatives would be paypal (quick and easy, but expensive), or wire transfer (slow and possibly expensive), or credit card (quick and cheap but not easy if neither party is a registered merchant). Another advantage is the lack of charge back (but obviously that can work as a disadvantage for the other party).

I'm talking about the fact that my latest international SEPA payments still took more than a day, rather than 2 hours. Also, in the weekends and holidays many banks refuse to do business. I'm also talking about other countries than just the SEPA area. And no, that's not just the US. Also China, Japan, Korea, Russia and India, for example.

And if you think Bitcoin transfers are free, you're conveniently ignoring the non-negligible CPU time involved in verification vs simply changing two numbers in a database.

I never said it was free. Just that it's low cost. So low cost in fact, that I can conveniently ignore it.

In fact, much of it is. There are many many laws on the books that already cover digital currencies. Just ask the people who have been arrested for transacting too much without a licence. Financial regulations and consumer protection laws still apply.

The ecosystem is also self-regulated in many ways. I don't mean in the whole sense of that loaded phrase, but simple things like the rules to create and maintain the money supply and rate of that creation or the fact that you can transact without the need fo

So how precisely is this useful? It allows both Alice and Bob to confirm Alice indeed sent X BTC to Bob. But if Alice is going to send Bitcoins to Bob anyway, then she need to have some means of uploading the details of her transaction.

The point of the service is you can use cheap and small receivers on embedded systems to confirm transactions, for example for vending machines etc. The mobile internet coverage is not as wide as radio signal, nor is it as cheap.

You don't need to send the whole blockchain to confirm a transaction. Just keep the block chain on a well connected server, and let the server send a quick SMS to the vending machine when the coins show up on a certain wallet address.

The blockchain is big, and it's the same for everyone, so broadcasting it is efficient. It also has the benefit of giving everyone a view of the blockchain that is independent of the individual position in the network, which could make some attacks more difficult.

The summary was quite lacking. For those not wanting to rtfa, here's what it says under why broadcasting the blockchain in a way that can be picked up by low cast receivers is or might be useful. An AC post below also mentions that TV coverage may be better than mobile internet coverage.

This scheme makes it easy to construct affordable receivers that do not need mobile data connections in order to follow bitcoin traffic and to react to the received bitcoin payments. This would make it possible to build bitcoin counterpart for cash payment terminals, anything from a cash register to a coin operated self-service laundry. If the receiver application follows only transactions relevant to itself, it will be possible to build it using even an ARM microcontroller.

Also, it allows an alternative way to access the bitcoin network in cases where only a very low speed Internet connection is available. And, for all the tin foil hat wearers out there, this is a way to connect to bitcoin network without a trace! You only need online access when you want to make transactions yourself.

The data stream can contain other information, such as exchange rates between bitcoins and traditional currencies.

BTW I had a Scandinavian girlfriend at some time, but I don't know exactly which country she was from, but definitely not from Finland, because each time when we were having sex, she yelled: No, no, I'm not Finnish!

Depends on the definition as there is no 'official' one.Geographically: Norway, Sweden and north Finland (perhaps the geographical one can be considered the 'official' one?)Cultural and language: Norway, Sweden and Denmark (as laymen seem not to know that a) north Finland speaks partly swedish and b) Denmark is geographically not connected)On the other hand the true laymen just put all into one basket and add Denmark as well as Finland to Skandinavia. No idea why, but I would bet the majority of germans wou

The Nordic countries comprise Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Scandinavia is basically your geographic definition; it's not quite clear cut, though, but we mostly care about being Nordic. Finland is the odd one out in terms of linguistic roots, but we share most of our culture with the Nordics -- we were basically a province of Sweden for centuries, and gained independence after a brief stint with Russia.

For some odd reason people elsewhere say "Scandinavian" when they mean "Nordic"

I have a good idea what nordic is:) after all we germans consider us close related.Regarding languages I read a year ago a quite funny book from Mikael Niemi, as/. can not unicode I don't paste the original name, roughly translated it is called "Popmusic from Vitulla".Vitulla is a swedish town close to the finish border. In that novel the author traveled around in north Sweden and north Finland and mentioned that on both sides both languages where spoken... but ofc it is more a novel than a book of facts

I've seen the movie and I've read other works by Niemi. Be careful with the spelling, it's Vittula, where "vittu" means "cunt", and the -la is a suffix for making it a toponym. OTOH, "vitulla" means "on top of a cunt" or "by using a cunt". Also, the original place is called Vittulajänkä, where "jänkä" is a kind of Northern wetland.

The language aspect is interesting, because it takes place in an area of Sweden where they speak Meänkieli, a dialect of Finnish. Swedish authorities c